


Friends and Monsters

by rannadylin



Series: Watcher Violet [7]
Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Childhood Memories, Fluff, Gen, Kid Fic, Reading
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-12-06 23:26:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18226829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rannadylin/pseuds/rannadylin
Summary: For the Memories ask meme on Tumblr, Queen asked "21. A memory of the first time they did an activity they love" for Lottie and what does Yolotli Itzli love more than reading?Well...researching, actually. This is technically probably the first time she did that. Also as close to the first time she read on her own that anyone can pinpoint.





	Friends and Monsters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [queen_scribbles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/queen_scribbles/gifts).



They were old friends long before she understood how to put them together in new combinations, how to decipher their secrets on her own, the letters on the pages. She didn’t know yet what to call each of them on its own, but repetition breeds familiarity and by the time she was two she could point to perhaps one in four words on the pages of her favorite books and echo what she’d heard Mama, or Papa, or sometimes Violy when their parents were busy with so many other little ones, say as they sat down to read that page to her. Mama always read every part in different, funny voices, sometimes even singing out some of the lines, making little Lottie laugh. Papa read with less energy and less volume, his voice as steady and gentle as his arms around each of the twins, somehow balancing the book on his lap between both of them. Lottie learned the words quickest when Violy took over reading to her little sister, though, for Violet, having only just finished her at-home learning herself and due to begin calpulli school that winter for the next part of her education, had a habit of trailing a finger along the rows of words, lined up on the page like the furrows in a field of rice, as she sounded out the words. So Lottie didn’t have to guess so much which cluster of letters made the word Violy was saying at any given moment, and she was quick to file every such clue away, only to echo them under her breath the next time someone read that book to her.

Which was frequent, for little Lottie, far more than her siblings, was forever pestering anyone and everyone to indulge her in a rereading. “Didn’t I just read that one to you yesterday?” her mother laughs now, as Lottie holds up a battered volume of _Monsters of the Deadfire Archipelago._

“That’s the one I read her this morning, at any rate,” her father adds as he walks up with baby Eréndira in his arms. “Exotic tastes, for one so small. Lost interest in the children’s section of our library already, have you, dear?” He hands the baby off to Mama and bends to tuck a wayward tuft of Lottie’s hair back into its braid. “I swear, half the things she finds in there, I didn’t even know we owned.”

Mama opens the book, flips idly through some of the pages with one hand while jiggling the baby in the other (Lottie leans away from Papa’s efforts, strains to see if any of the words are the ones she’s looking for). “I think, actually, this is the one Adela gave her last month when Magda and Voltan were in town for the festival.”

“Oh, did she? That’s awfully nice of her.” Papa’s mouth quirks in the way that means he wants to laugh and thinks he ought not. “Also somewhat frightening, given that means there are _two_ little ones in the clan with such exotic tastes. Adela being a wee bit older than this cousin of hers does not exempt her. Should we be worried you’re about to dash off to the Deadfire on an expedition, Lottie?”

She beams, eyes wide at the thought, already beginning to compile a list in the back of her head of the things she _must_ see on such an expedition – but that brings her back to the _immediate_ expedition, or at least errand, or anyway, the question to be resolved. “Papa,” she asks, “do the zulani snakes come from Deadfire?”

Her parents exchange a bewildered look (not the first in Lottie’s three years, nor will it be the last) at this glimpse into her thoughts. “Er, not to my knowledge,” Papa says. “And I would think, after reading this _Monsters_ book to you so often in the last month, I would remember if it mentioned zulani snakes…”

Lottie purses her lips in determination and reaches to Mama for the book. “It called them something else. But Violy was reading me ’bout the animals in the Plains, from her book for school, and zulani do that thing, you know, they _twist_ round something then they _eat_ it.” She demonstrates this by twirling around several times, skirts swirling wide, clutching the book ever tighter with a squeal of giggling.

Her parents still look bewildered when she comes to a stop, momentarily dizzy. So she sits down and opens the book from Adi on her lap, flipping through in search of words she has only recently come to know. (She is three now: far more than one in four have become friends, recognized with delight in new sentences as she would be delighted to see her cousins or calpulli playmates or even her various siblings in some place where she never saw them before, and to find them still the same people though out of their proper place.)

It still takes her some time to find it, for the book did _not_ use the name _zulani_ , even if she knew (she does not, yet) what form that sound would take on a page. But Violet’s book used other, less particular words for the creatures too, and she took note of their shapes: snake, serpent. _There_ it is! She thrusts a finger at the rice-furrow where _Winding Serpent_ grows. She says that part out loud, and Papa’s eyes widen as he crouches beside her to see it. She doesn’t recognize all of the words following after that part; seldom have her narrators read this far in this book, and Deadfire serpents appear to attract to themselves many words she has not yet met in other, safer rice-furrows. Well, they _are_ Monsters, after all, so that seems proper.

But she presses on and fits together this much, slowly reading aloud the bits she can: “…shoot up out of the…the…”

“Ocean,” Papa supplies, and she flies on, not before adding that one to her growing collection of word-friends.

“…landing on the deck, coi…coiling and…winding their way a…around, snapping up any crew…” Lottie pauses. This one is an odd friend, for she’s heard them read it enough that she could make the sounds to go with that bunch of letters on the page, but, “Papa? What’s crew?”

“Dawnstars preserve us,” Mama mutters, still jiggling the baby, “when did she learn to read?”

Papa glances between the two of them and diplomatically opts to answer his wife first, or at least to respond, for what answer to that mystery could he know? “Explains her recent selections from the library, at any rate. Or maybe it’s the other way around?” He proceeds to Lottie’s question. “Crew are the kith working on the boat, dear. The sailors and such.”

She takes this in with eyes and mouth wide and round. “Ohhhh,” she sighs with tiny disappointment. “I thought it was some animal I hadn’t heard of before.”

Papa chuckles. “Not to worry, my curious one. There are yet plenty of those to discover, especially since it seems that no book in the library shall be safe henceforth.”

She briefly wonders what _henceforth_ looks like on a page, but does not think it would be on this page of _Monsters_ , so she returns to the question that sent her to this book in the first place. “I think it’s the same, though? _Winding Serpent_ , it’s just like the zulani?”

“Oh,” Papa says, adjusting his spectacles so that she is not sure if she imagines the gleam in his eyes or if that’s just the light flashing off the glass. “Because they both constrict their prey.”

“Constrict?” She glances back to the book, wondering how _that_ one looks on the page, because it seems likelier to be in this passage than _henceforth,_ since Papa is actually talking about the snakes now.

“That _twisty_ bit,” he grins, twirling a hand in imitation of her demonstration earlier. “Winding and coiling around, yes, and then they do indeed eat it.”

She brightens. “So they _are_ from Deadfire!”

“Hm. I suppose there could be some common ancestry. Not quite the same creature, though, Lottie. For one, zulani are much smaller than these Deadfire sea serpents must be. I’ve never heard of an orlan attacked by one, at any rate. Mostly they go for rabbits and things. So don’t you worry about zulani coming after you, my wee clever girl.”

She blinks at him in surprise, ears flicking forward. “I wasn’t worried,” says Lottie. “Just curious.”


End file.
